Posted
by
samzenpus
on Wednesday January 13, 2010 @07:57PM
from the less-math-more-social-science dept.

artemis67 writes "A man studying in London has taken a mathematical equation that predicts the possibility of alien life in the universe to explain why he can't find a girlfriend. Peter Backus, a native of Seattle and PhD candidate and Teaching Fellow in the Department of Economics at the University of Warwick, near London, in his paper, 'Why I don't have a girlfriend: An application of the Drake Equation to love in the UK,' used math to estimate the number of potential girlfriends in the UK. In describing the paper on the university Web site he wrote 'the results are not encouraging. The probability of finding love in the UK is only about 100 times better than the probability of finding intelligent life in our galaxy.'"

Anybody can find a girlfriend. The question is, how difficult is it to find one that meets his criteria. If he's trying to find one that's super hot, enchanted by him, not a deranged bitch, and not in it for the money, then maybe his chances of finding alien life are actually higher.

f(L) is fraction of people in London from N*. Why limityourself to London? You or your partner might move, travel,visit friends, soon even if you're looking for love!Even within London, the author doesn't count people movement -those who come to London over time.

Further, the author forgets that most all people *like* to findproductive partnerships. Unlike SETI, where we have no evidencethat the other party is looking for us, we know that women liketo find great men just as much you want to find an "attractive,age-appropriate woman with a University education".

Worst, the author spent time write why he "can't find" a partnerwhen he would be better served getting out there doing activitieshe loves with other people and having a great time life. Thenother people will find him, and help find others.

I agree with what you say, most of the time people just don't put the effort into it. Not only that the guy sounds like a bit of a douchebag, why would you EVER use mathematics for human relationships? Sounds like a bad idea of limiting your horizons and he assumes he knows what kinds of women would be able to charm him or get along with.

If there is anything about my experience with human beigns is - you don't know shit and have to keep pushing on and meeting people, if you add up all the people you've eve

You sound like someone who doesn't have much in the way of standards. Sorry, but there are a lot of things (totally side from looks) that make a person totally un-datable and the sad fact of life is, unless you have no standards, the overwhelming majority of people in the world are un-datable - which then leaves only a small group of people for you to date, which then makes it even harder to find "the one".

Face it, even if you spend every minute of your life "relaxing and meeting others", there's still an

Actually it's not reasonable, but predictable. There is actually a (more or less) general consensus on beauty. Basically it revolves around our liking for healthy looking partners that look like they could be partners to viable offspring with.

Love, too, is surprisingly predictable. Take two people who would not automatically rule each other out romantically, put them in frequent contact with each other, give each a significant need (sexual or not) that isn't being met in their life but is met through the other, and odds are surprisingly high that they'll end up in a relationship. And there are all sorts of actions that dramatically increase the odds. For example, confessing your feelings to another person tends to encourage them to reciprocate even if they hadn't had the feelings before. That's why the #1 and #2 rules for if you're trying to avoid having an affair are that if you develop feelings for someone else, immediately cut off contact with the person insomuch as is possible and *never* confess your feelings to them.

Tyrol: How many of us ended up with the people we really wanted to be with? Got stuck with the best of limited options? And why? Because the ones we really wanted, the really loved, were dead, and dying, or turned out to be Cylons and they didn't know it. If Boomer had...Adama: Listen.Tyrol: If I had known...Adama: Let's - let's go.Tyrol: No. No. I didn't know.Adama: Let's go home.Tyrol: I didn't know. So I buried my head in the sand, and I took it, and I settled. I settled for that shriek. Those dull, vaca

I'm thinking some of his numbers were off. Particularly his estimate of the number of women in the acceptable age bracket. He had 5%, but I'm betting it's more like 68% for your average person (+/- 1 standard deviation) and that's the combined concept of "people he would find attractive that would also find him attractive". The human race simply would not exist if you could only bring yourself to schtup 5% of the population and only 5% of those would let you. That already increases his chances by a factor of almost 300. That brings his odds back to 1 in 1000, which seems reasonable and realistic. Then factor in the number of women he can poll in his productive years in search of those 1/1000ths (compared to the number of planets he can poll for signs of civilization in his lifetime) and the odds of finding someone rapidly approach one. Which makes intuitive sense, since as I mentioned before, the human race still exists.

The people who need to be worried are the outliers. The folks who are 2 or 3 deviations from the mean in terms of attractiveness (physically, mentally, emotionally, materially). Those on the high end may be forced to settle. Those on the low end may have to sample outside their species.

Congratulations, you can google some numbers and stick them into a formula. You're brilliant, and it's oh so funny to come up with bullshit statistics like "only 100 times more likely than finding intelligent life in the universe".

One of the reasons he can't find a girlfriend is because he is one of those people who USE the Drake equation. But seriously, look at his Criteria.

Backus found that of the 30 million women in the UK, only 26 would be suitable girlfriends for him. His equation looked at the total number of women in the country, then narrowed it down using relevant factors including the number of women in London; the number of "age-appropriate" women (those aged between 24-34); women with a college degree; and those who Backus would find physically attractive.

Okay - so how do you POSSIBLY apply a statistical analysis on something as subjective as a womans physical attractiveness?

> Okay - so how do you POSSIBLY apply a statistical analysis on something as subjective as a womans physical attractiveness?

He assumes he finds 1 in 20 women attractive. Note that this number does not say anything about WHAT he finds attractive in a woman, since that information is irrelevant for the equation. I don't see why this wouldn't work and how the 'subjectiveness of a womans physical attractiveness' would interfere.

He is studying at the University of Warwick, which is near Coventry. It is far away from London. He is "studying in London" in the same sense that all Californians are residents of San Francisco. Has FOX News' target audience never heard of any English city besides London?

Apparently he has no attraction value, since that is also one of the keys of finding a potential girlfriend. Anyone with sufficient attraction (for instance, fame, money) would be hard-pressed to escape from potential suitors/stalkers/paparazzi.

For every 3 girls I talk to, I'll get one number.For every 3 numbers I get, I'll get a date.For every 3 dates I get, I'll get a 2nd date.For every 3 2nd dates I get I'll score.For every 3 girls I score with I will continue to date.So this means I'll actually have 1 in 243 chance of meeting a girl I like beyond just sex.Given that I date about once a week (on average) that mean every 4.6 years I'll be in a relationship.

And checking my work, that works out to seem right.

I *HIGHLY* recommend the book "Mathematics and Sex" which I believe I bought because of a/. book review...

In it, it says 12 relationships is what you need to find your best match. Given 4.6 * 12, I'll be 56 before I find the one...

The mistake is presume that the factors are independent of one another. When you assume independence you can take the logical intersection of the probabilities which is multiplying less-than-unity probabilities together. You can obtain a rather small result choosing enough factors. But if the factors are correlated, the correct mathematics is the largest probability number. Both the astronomical conditions and girlfriend factors are correlated to some degree makeing the results less than valid.

This is the identical mistake made valuating debt securities. The mathematical underpinning was that you can offload most of the risk into a "junk tranch" by assuming failures like foreclosures are statistically independent. By "drake equation magic", i.e. multiplying probabilities to obtain the group probability, the group risk appears rather small. Independence is a decent assumption during good economic times because economic failures are more individual luck or actions. But during a recession, economic failures are correlated, making the group statistical model invalid. The so-called good-risk securities turned into garbage and the junk securities became gold.

I fear since a economics grad student does not understand probability like so many of his peers, this does not bode well for the future economy.

He's set personal standards that are virtually impossible to meet. That would be his problem, not the female population's.

Are you kidding me? All he wants is a person around his age, living in the same city, with a university education, and that he finds attractive. That is not "virtually impossible" the only thing there that is probably different than 90+% of what everyone is looking for is the university education, and I wouldn't even be sure it's that different. Now, having said that I don't think using math like this is all that great an idea, though it could work.

That is precisely where his personal standards are guaranteed to out of sync with reality. It's not really a problem for anyone but him, though... whatever predisposition he has in this department is unlikely to get propagated any further in the gene pool, as he's unlikely to reproduce.

His standards of attractiveness alone only apply to 2.5% of his age group (5% of females). Those are ridiculously high standards. Then he narrows it further by requiring them to live in the exact same city (yeah, nice goal, but it doesn't always work out that way) and have a similar education.

Compare this to the average high school where every other kid pairs up with someone in the same school. What does his Drake equation have to say about that?

I think 5% is a reasonable number. Keep in mind when thinking about the number, he's 31, that means the dating pool of women is shrinking, I would think the majority of those are from the end of the pool that the general public is going to find attractive, which means that the available women keep getting "uglier".

That's rather insulting. His age group is 24 to (34?), and you're acting like the singles in that age group are mostly hags.

To most high school students, their relationship is TEH MOST SERIOUS EVAR! In retrospect, they're not, but that doesn't change the equation.

5% is way, way, way too low. In the right situation, I bet he could fall in love with 80% of women in his age group. And the percent that is single is still quite high. And people don't get "locked up" forever in relationships, either, due to divorce or breakups. And it's not like people get married in the order of most attractive to least.

Plus you might date someone you find averagely attractive, by the end of the night glimpse something about them that makes you like them more, and six months later think they're the most beautiful person in the world.

They say familiarity breeds contempt, but sometimes it works the other way.

It sounds more like you are a typical nerd and your only standard is "female who will talk to me". People looking for a real relationship have standards, even if it means that they'll end up alone for life - it's better to be single than to end up marrying the wrong person.

Oh yes, wanting more than just "smart and pretty" is "out of sync with reality". How about some pretty simple things such as "having shared hobbies" and "similar values / religion" or "similar sense of humor". It doesn't take a long list of what you're looking for in a significant other to realize that it's pretty damn hard to find someone you can have a real relationship with.

I'm British. I've spent a fair amount of time in the US. And I disagree.

Patriotism aside, I think one probably develops a taste for local styles.

Oh, and TV isn't really representative of real life. British TV has less of a propensity for glamour than American TV. Our most popular soaps - Coronation St. and Eastenders - make a habit of taking beautiful actresses and making them dowdy in costume/makeup.

He assumes only 1 in 20 women are attractive enough. Maybe I'm a horn dog, but it seems that if you lined up 20 random women MY AGE, I would find more than one attractive enough to give a chance. Either he's not accounting for correlation between the age requirements and the attractiveness requirements, or he seems extremely picky about looks.